SOEP Research: Survey Methodology and Data Science

Learn to use the SOEP over lunch

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study is a representative panel study for the German population, collecting data on a broad variety of topics of everyday life, including general well-being, household composition, educational aspirations and educational status, income and occupational biographies, leisure time activities, housing, health, political orientation and more. With its long running panel...

Who Benefits from Place-based Policies? Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data (with Philipp Grunau, Florian Hoffmann, and Thomas Lemieux)

We study the wage and employment effects of a German place-based policy using a research design that exploits conditionally exogenous EU-wide rules governing the program parameters at the regional level. The place-based program subsidizes investments to create jobs with a subsidy rate that varies across labor market regions. The analysis uses matched data on the universe of establishments and...

The #ManyDaughters Study is Officially Kicking Off!

We are happy to announce the launch of the #ManyDaughters Study, an international research initiative exploring how having daughters influences behavior, preferences, and attitudes. Researchers from all fields of social sciences are invited to participate in this collaborative project, which will use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to test four key hypotheses on the impact of daughters ...

Effects of Changing the Incentive Strategy on Panel Performance: Experimental Evidence From a Probability-Based Online Panel of Refugees

This study investigated how changing the mode of incentive administration between two panel waves, spaced six months apart, affected longitudinal survey response. A split-ballot incentive experiment was used to compare shifting from an unconditional pre-paid incentive mode in the first wave to a conditional post-paid mode in the second wave, versus consistently using a conditional post-paid mode across ...

Post-Migration Stress Mediates Associations Between Potentially Traumatic Peri-Migration Experiences and Mental Health Among Middle Eastern Refugees in Germany

Background On their way to host countries, refugees are often exposed to severe adversity, including cumulative experiences of fraud, extortion, robbery, detention, and shipwrecks, as well as prolonged, life-threatening small boat crossings. However, little research has examined the long-term impact of such peri-migration stressors on subsequent stress and mental health after arrival. This study explored ...

Do talk money – Reducing income nonresponse in surveys (with Katharina Allinger)

Item nonresponse is a common issue in surveys. We implement an experiment to reduce nonresponse to income questions in an international household survey, looking at four different countries. Survey respondents are asked to report their exact household income. We randomize those who refuse to answer into two groups. In a follow-up question, the control group is asked to choose their income from a...

Lohnt sich ein CAWI-Follow-Up für Face-to-Face? Erste Ergebnisse aus der IAB-BAMF-SOEP-Befragung von Geflüchteten

Younger Adults’ Nuclear and Extended Family Relationships in Europe: A Latent Class Analysis

The present study identifies and compares typical classes of relationship qualities in the nuclear and extended family ties of younger adults across nine European countries (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, as well as the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). We used KINMATRIX data that were collected online in 2022-23 from an ego-centric perspective of ...

From Concurrent to Push-To-Web Mixed-Mode: Experimental Design Change in the German Social Cohesion Panel

Research shows that concurrent and sequential self-administered mixed-mode designs both have advantages and disadvantages in terms of panel survey recruitment and maintenance. Since concurrent mixed-mode designs usually achieve higher initial response rates at lower bias than sequential mixed-mode designs, the former may be ideal for panel recruitment. However, concurrent designs produced high share ...

Immigration, Segregation, and Attitudes Toward Immigrants: A Longitudinal Multiscalar Analysis across Egohoods

Evidence on how proximity to ethnic outgroups shapes attitudes toward immigration remains inconclusive. We suggest this may be driven, in part, by the fact that studies rarely account for the role of residential segregation. We argue that how the minority-share in an environment affects majority-group attitudes will depend on how segregated groups are from one another. To explore this, we undertake ...